Diana Greene Foster is a Demographer and Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and Director of Research at the UCSF-based program Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). In both her capacity as UCSF professor and as ANSIRH Director of Research, Dr. Foster has mentored numerous social scientists through their doctoral work and early research, on their way to independent faculty and research positions.

Dr. Foster uses quantitative models and analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of family planning policies and the effect of unintended pregnancy on women’s lives. She leads the Turnaway Study, a longitudinal prospective study of almost 1,000 women who received or were denied wanted abortions from 30 facilities across the United States. She also leads a Global Turnaway Study, documenting the experience of women denied abortions in five other countries where it is legal: Bangladesh, Colombia, Nepal, South Africa and Tunisia. Work from the Turnaway Study has received widespread media attention and has been cited by Pro Publica and Mother Jones as one of four ways that research has reframed the abortion debate.

In addition, Dr. Foster studies women's preferences for specific contraceptive features, including IUD self-removability and over-the counter-access to oral contraceptives. Her work evaluating Family PACT, the California State family planning program, demonstrated the effectiveness of the program in reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancy, as well as the financial and health benefits of dispensing a one-year supply of contraception. Dr. Foster also created a new methodology for estimating pregnancies averted, based on a Markov model and a microsimulation to identify the cost-effectiveness of advance provision of emergency contraception.

Dr. Foster received her undergraduate degree in Political Economy of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley, her MA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, and her PhD in Demography and Public Policy from Princeton University.